We've been trouncing through 15th Century renaissance Italy for the past few weeks with the latest in the Assassin's Creed series, which has surprised us on countless levels thanks to a revamped focus on issues had with the first - all of which have been broached and fixed.

It's proof of the strength of the series, and of Ubisoft's commitment to quality and delivering to their audience. So if you've ever dreamt of running across the rooftops of Florence as a master assassin aided by the great Leonardo da Vinci (and let's face it, who hasn't), Assassin's Creed II is for you.

The first one ended on a goddamn cliffhanger, which is appropriate considering how much free running you do.

But I'll be spending money on this installment too, I don't care how repetitive it was, I still went around killing thousands of innocent lives, punched at least 100 beggers, and charged at least 20 guards off cliff faces in the home town (followed by systematically grabbing and throwing every other guard off while man giggling to myself).

The fights were weak but intuitive. By that i mean it felt naturaly to change targets mid fight, throw a big hit moving you away from the people surrounding you and throwing a dagger at someone randomly behind you because they were far enough to allow it.

Although i found it annoying that if you did anything too agressive in most fights you'd be parry countered, but you were rewarded for blocking for too long, by someone grabbing you to throw, but instead you just counter their throw leaving you as the victor. So that made every fight the same, block, counter, block counter throw, block sidestep the big swing which would go through the block, attack the guy who has his fist in the air while he's not guarding and block again.

Basically this game was like grand theft auto for me, i got to go around exploring, killing and being a jerk to anyone i wanted at minimum penalty, but also surprisingly interesting storyline.

The other problem was the game was too short. Really i think it may be possible to complete in about 2 hours if you do the bare minimum.

If the new one fixes the fighting a little bit, keeps its free running and killing, while extending and maintaining high quality story lines, then i'll be super happy.

First one was the first PS3 game and first game I've played in years, thoroughly enjoyed it and have watched the trailor for second one, looks great. My only problem with the first one was that I finished it in probably 7-8hrs play time which I thought was kind of poor, very glad I just hired it out for a week and was done rather than spend $xx on a game.

I started playing AC2 with alot of hesitation, thinking "whilst Ubisoft say they listened and fixed the mistakes the first had.. surely they have no idea what the real mistakes are.. and surely if they did they don't have a decent way of fixing them"... turns out i was way f*****g wrong, and instead had one of the best gaming experiences this year.

AC2 made up for how bad AC really was.. when you play this installment you will ask yourself how on earth did you enjoy the first one so much... (on the assumption you enjoyed the first one.. if not you will be pleasantly surprised how much better the game is)

The ending was totes unexpected but gives way more light on the situation and builds up for what hopefully will be a fantastic 3rd installment.

My only problem with the first one was that I finished it in probably 7-8hrs play time which I thought was kind of poor,

You will be happy.. took me 2 8 hour days and abit more to finish it at 91% completed... I probably could of done it quicker, but i really took my time taking the game in.

I probably sound like a fan boy... but I'm only really impressed with the game so much because of how hesitant i was to play it to begin with.

yeah i agree, but on a tv don't you need a top of the line card to support a high resolution? i dunno im just asking..

My current desktop monitor runs in the same res as hidef TVs ( i <3 my 26 inch wide) and im running an old 8800GTS. I haven't had any troubles running the latest games like dragon age, MW2. Many games are targeted at consoles in terms of graphical detail so you don't really need a top end card at the moment unless you want to run crysis on its highest settings.

If you want to run with anti-aliasing then you will definitely need a beefier card.

Its mostly an awesome game, I just wish they hadn't put the races in, because all the races do is show off the limitations of their parkour system and highlight all the worst parts of the game mechanics. The system is great when you're just running around normally, but its obviously not made with pinpoint precision in mind, and once you start racing against a clock, it just becomes absolute frustration as you're randomly jumping off into the middle of nowhere, climbing up walls you brush past while sprinting, having to constantly fight with the camera to try and find the next waypoint, etc, etc.

Then, just to add insult to injury, there isn't even a "restart" option on the menu, if you f*** up and want to restart the race your only option is to abort your current mission, wait while the game loads and puts you back where you were before you started, then take the mission again, sit through the mission briefing dialogue because it is unskippable, and try again.